Steve is a man's man and straight as an arrow, or at least straight acting. He has tried gay sex but finds he prefers sex with women. The only problem is, other than sex, he prefers men. This causes him to send a lot of mixed signals confusing the women he wants to date and the men he wants to hang with.
Charlie is his best friend even though Charlie is also confused about what Steve wants. This could be because Charlie is also confused about what Charlie wants. Charlie wants Steve but Charlie doesn't want to be either the top or the bottom. Neither anal nor oral sex appeals to him but he wants to see Steve naked and to touch and be touched, to cuddle and make love.
They don't live together. Each one lives alone in his own apartment but they are in walking distance of each other and a coffee shop. They joke about how much their lives are like that one famous sitcom except their apartments are smaller and sparser. Steve's bathroom didn't even come with a bathtub. He got permission to have one of those bathtubs on feet installed in his living room because it was the only space a bathtub could fit.
They typically work low wage, dead end jobs, the kind that don't offer any stability. They are in their early twenties and they do attend community college but neither can rely on their parents to pay tuition. Steve's dad disappeared and his mom is a prostitute. Charlie's dad is a workaholic that expects Charlie to become a workaholic and live a spartan life of no pleasure. Charlie's mom is mentally ill suffering wild mood swings that include violent fits of anger and hypersexual fits of lust.
One of them gets a Chronivac.